Category Archives: Gulf restoration

Gulf Seafood Institute: Gulf Restoration Plan Announced by NOAA

by / Newsroom Ink October 9, 2014

Coast

A Gulf restoration plan has been announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Natural Resource Damage Assessment trustees. Photo: NOAA

by Ed Lallo/Gulf Seafood News Editor

Map

Phase III Early Restoration Project Locations Map: NOAA

A formal Record of Decision to implement a Gulf restoration plan has been announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Natural Resource Damage Assessment trustees in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which occurred off the shores of Louisiana in 2010.

The goal of the 44 projects, totaling an estimated $627 million, is to restore barrier islands, shorelines, dunes, underwater grasses and oyster beds along the Florida to Louisiana coastline. The announcement marks the largest number of Gulf restoration projects slated since the spill with the aim to address a range of injuries to natural resources and the loss of recreational use.

“Preserving, protecting, and restoring natural resources is an integral part of our efforts to foster resilience in communities nationwide, including those affected by the Deep Water Horizon oil spill,” said Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D., Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. “These projects reflect an earnest commitment to the Gulf and will enhance the region’s economic, social, and ecological resilience in the future.”

Habitat the Key

Corky5l

According to Gulf Seafood Institute (GSI) Mississippi board member Corky Perret, “Habitat is the key, it’s first what you do to an animal’s habitat then what you do to the animals.” Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

According to Gulf Seafood Institute (GSI) Mississippi board member Corky Perret, “Habitat is the key, it’s first what you do to an animal’s habitat then what you do to the animals. These restoration projects should create and/or restore habitat vital to our fish and wildlife resources. The Mississippi project is desperately needed, as are any projects stabilizing the barrier islands.”

NOAA, which is directly involved in the implementation of only four of the proposed projects, is supporting an overall Early Restoration plan that includes both ecological and human use projects as outlined in the Final Programmatic and Phase III Early Restoration Plan and Early Restoration Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.

“Early restoration provides an opportunity to implement restoration projects agreed upon by the trustees and BP prior to the completion of the full natural resource damage assessment and restoration plan,” said Bob Gill, a GSI board member from Florida. “The government has found BP, and other responsible parties, obligated to compensate the public for the full scope of the natural resource injury and lost use caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including the cost of assessing such injury and planning for restoration.”

Twilley

“The investments to rehabilitate the critical coastal habitats of Louisiana begins the long road to a more sustainable delta,” said Louisiana Sea Grant director Robert Twilley (left) touring the Louisiana marshes. Photo: Sea Grant

According to the agency, its largest project will be in Louisiana to fund and execute restoration of beach, dune, and back-barrier marsh habitat on Chenier Ronquille, a barrier island off the state’s coast. The project is one of four barrier islands projects proposed for restoration as part of a $318 million Louisiana Outer Coast Restoration Project to be implemented by NOAA, the U.S. Department of Interior and Louisiana.

“The investments to rehabilitate the critical coastal habitats of Louisiana begins the long road to a more sustainable delta,” said Louisiana Sea Grant director Robert Twilley.

Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and NOAA will also partner to undertake three “living shorelines” projects. These projects involve a blend of restoration technologies used to stabilize shorelines and restore fish and wildlife habitat. The three projects are:

  • Alabama: The $5 million Swift Tract Living Shoreline Project to construct approximately 1.6 miles of breakwaters covered with oyster shell to reduce shoreline erosion, protect salt marsh habitat, and restore ecosystem diversity and productivity in Mobile Bay.
  • Florida: NOAA will partner with the State of Florida on the $11 million Florida Pensacola Bay Living Shoreline Project to restore shoreline at two sites along the Pensacola waterfront. Both proposed sites feature breakwaters that will provide four acres of reef habitat and protect the 18.8 acres of salt marsh habitat.
  • Mississippi: NOAA will partner with the State of Mississippi to improve nearly six miles of shoreline as part of the proposed Hancock County Marsh Living Shoreline Project. The goal of this $50 million project is to reduce shoreline erosion by dampening wave energy and encouraging reestablishment of habitat in the region.

Focus on Wave Attenuation

“I am a little disappointed the NOAA projects focus primarily on wave attenuation,” said Alabama GSI board member Chris Nelson. “Gulf seafood production and processing industries have suffered, and continue to suffer, grievous injury due to the lack of seafood for harvest and distribution to our domestic market.”

Chris Nelson, vice president of  Bon Secour Fisheries who represents Alabama on the board, tries to work a problem to the smallest denominator.   Photo:  Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

“I am a little disappointed the NOAA projects focus primarily on wave attenuation,” said Alabama GSI board member Chris Nelson. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

Nelson believes the living shorelines are indirect improvements to seafood production capacity through a largely theoretical enhancement to habitat. “What is unknown is what extent the habitat created through living shorelines is in any way comparable to more natural applications like cultch material on bottom for the purpose of growing oysters,” he said.

GSI understands the need for funding the current projects, however the organization feels future funding needs to address such projects as offshore restoration and the creation of fisheries habitat desperately needed by both recreational and commercial fishermen.

The new projects are to be funded through the $1 billion provided to the trustees by BP, as part of the 2011 Framework Agreement on early restoration. Ten early restoration projects already are in various stages of implementation as part of the first two phases of early restoration.

“It’s exciting to see such a comprehensive Gulf coast restoration plan funded with this amount of money move forward,” said GSI Texas board member Jim Gossen. “Let’s hope our decision makers, scientists and brightest minds have carefully studied the situation, and do what’s best to assure these precious resources are around for future generations. This may be our only chance to fix the mistakes of the past.”

 

Special thanks to Gulf Seafood Institute

E&E: $627M in Restoration Projects Receive Final Approval & Al.com: Oil spill recovery projects: Lots of ideas, but all will not get funded

E&E
 
$627M in restoration projects receive final approval
Annie Snider, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, October 3, 2014

Hundreds of millions of dollars will soon be flowing to the Gulf
Coast after the largest tranche of restoration projects related to
the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill today received its final go-ahead.

Federal and state officials charged with studying the effects of the
spill and developing plans for recovery projects today issued their
record of decision for 44 projects totaling $627 million.

The projects are spread across the Gulf of Mexico and range from
creating barrier islands off the Louisiana coast to building a
causeway and beachfront promenade in Mississippi. They are part of
the unprecedented agreement with BP PLC under which the company
provided a $1 billion down payment on what it will owe through the
Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process for destruction to
natural resources and lost human access to beaches and fisheries.

“The Trustees have done a comprehensive job of identifying projects
to help the Gulf Coast recover from the devastating Deepwater Horizon
spill and have given careful consideration to the many insightful
public comments received through the process,” Interior Secretary
Sally Jewell said in a statement.

Her department will see some of the money for work on two national
seashore projects and a barrier island.

Environmental groups have largely been pleased to have new
restoration projects moving forward after having seen only a handful
of projects approved in the first two phases of awards. Groups have
raised concerns, though, that the projects have been too focused on
compensating for lost human use rather than environmental
restoration.

Much of that criticism for the latest batch has been directed at an
$85.5 million effort to build an Alabama hotel and convention center
and related enhancements to a state park.

“The proposed Alabama Lodge and Conference Center, a private endeavor
exhausting public funds, is a serious misuse of restoration dollars
that could provide much needed resources to our damaged ecosystem,”
the environmental group Gulf Restoration Network said in a statement
in June. “Our coastal communities depend on a clean and healthy Gulf,
and these precious restoration dollars cannot be spent on short-
sighted projects that will not revitalize our Coast.”

The trustees responded directly to groups’ criticisms of the project
in their decision today, arguing that all concerns over it have long
since been resolved.

Of the money approved for projects today, roughly 63 percent — $397
million — is for ecological projects and $230 million goes to
recreational use projects.

________
Al.com

Oil spill recovery projects: Lots of ideas, but all will not get funded
An aerial photo taken Monday April 16, 2012 shows the coast of Pensacola Beach, Fla., during a media helicopter flight organized by the BP Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. One project currently being proposed by the organization’s Florida Trustees involves dune restoration along Pensacola Beach. The plan calls for about 394,000 native plants to be planted along a 4.2 mile stretch of beach dunes at a cost of about $586,000. (AP Photo/Northwest Florida Daily News, Devon Ravine)
Print
By Michael Finch II | mfinch@al.com
 
on October 03, 2014 at 2:23 PM, updated October 03, 2014 at 2:35 PM
 

MOBILE, Alabama — The line for oil spill money grows longer. Projects submitted by local governments, environmental groups and those with an inclination to pursue a restoration cause now totals 58 — up from 47 about one month ago.  

They range from a hundred thousand dollar study of beach nourishment on Dauphin Island to a multimillion dollar road project that would allow freshwater and saltwater to intermingle freely in Mobile Bay.

The combined cost of all the submitted projects — now about $430 million — underscores a more important fact: Not all will receive funding. And there’s still more submissions to come.
 
Still administrators of the RESTORE Act, legislation passed to siphon Clean Water fines back to Gulf Coast states, are urging more people to detail their ideas in an online portal where the list is slowly mounting.
 
The numerous efforts to repair damage done by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can be hard to track, involving a myriad number of federal and state agencies. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is at the helm of all the state’s recovery efforts.

At a meeting this week, Patti Powell, the department’s state lands director, said the worst thing would be if there weren’t enough ideas, noting that the onus will be on the agency to guide any project that’s selected.  

“Our department is going to be responsible, no matter who the sub grant may go to, we’re going to be responsible for ensuring compliance with all the federal grant laws and state laws. This is one reason why we call it a suggestion,” Powell said.

“Somebody may have a great idea, but we may not have confidence that that entity can track and hold and handle the federal funds in compliance. That’s why we don’t say on the front end ‘you enter it you get it.’ “

Who decides?
Until two months ago, states were waiting for the federal government to release the rules to that will govern how the money can be spent.

The decision-making process has not been created yet, but it will be a shifty challenge for the Alabama Gulf Coast Recovery Council, as money flows in incrementally to the state.
 
As of June 2014, there was a total $220 million set aside for the states to control; Alabama received an equal $44 million share of that.

It is solely up to the council of local and state leaders, mayors from Bayou La Batre, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Dauphin Island, Mobile and Fairhope; one county commissioner from Mobile and Baldwin counties each; the director of the Alabama State Port Authority and the governor to decide how to spend this money.

“When more money comes it may be a totally different process, because you’re not dealing with that much money in this first round they may decide not to spend any of it,” said Eliska Morgan, executive director for the Alabama council.

“We don’t know what we we’re going to get in the end, so why should we spend any of this money? They have to make that decision. It’s a possibility; there are lots of possibilities.”

Awaiting fines
There’s still more money to come. Last month, Halliburton agreed to a $1.1 billion settlement for its involvement in the oil spill.

A federal judge in New Orleans recently ruled that BP should be held grossly negligent in its operation of the rig that exploded, pushing maximum penalties up to $18 billion. The British oil giant recently appealed the decision.   

Anadarko Petroleum may be on the hook as well. The Texas-based firm has been fighting in court to avoid paying fines, claiming it only held a stake in the Macondo well, not the rig, 
according to news reports.

The next phase of the trial that will determine how much in penalties both companies must pay is scheduled to start in January 2015.   

What to do first?
The unsettled nature of future payments also gives way to the question of what should they give money to first? Should they ration it out toward several small projects like the $250,000 study in Dauphin Island; or should it be doled out on a mega-plan with a broader reach like the $42 million bridge-raising project on the Mobile causeway put forth by the Mobile Baykeeper?

The answer is just a guess for now. Morgan said the council will meet again before the year ends — by then their intentions may be clearer.    

The public will be encouraged to send comments to the council, expressing their opinions for-and-against any submitted projects, and about the rules used to select them. But there will not be a formal public meeting.  
 

Morgan said “once their evaluation process is determined — after public comment — then the (council) will really start to review projects.

Truthout: Better Oversight and Less Drilling Needed to Protect the Gulf (video)

 

TRANSCRIPT:

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.

Who can forget the images of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010? The event killed 11 workers and resulted in millions of barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, becoming the biggest offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history. On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that BP was grossly negligent, and the company could be liable for up to $18 billion in additional fines. BP says they will be appealing the ruling, and they issued this statement on their website:

“BP believes that the finding that it was grossly negligent with respect to the accident and that its activities at the Macondo well amounted to willful misconduct is not supported by the evidence at trial.”

And they also said:

“BP will seek to show that its conduct merits a penalty that is less than the applicable maximum after application of the statutory factors.”

With us to help us understand what this ruling all means and what it really means for the communities most directly affected by the oil spill disaster down there in the Gulf is our guest, Steve Murchie. Steve joins us from New Orleans, where he is the campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, a nonprofit organization that they say empowers people to protect and restore the natural resources and communities of the Gulf of Mexico.

Thanks for joining us, Steve.

STEVE MURCHIE, CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR, GULF RESTORATION NETWORK: Thanks for having me.

DESVARIEUX: So, Steve, what’s your reaction to the verdict? And what has the Gulf, the community there down in the Gulf–are they seeing this really as a victory?

MURCHIE: Judge Barbier’s ruling that BP was grossly negligent and behaved recklessly is vindication for all the people who’ve been living through the consequences of the disaster last four and a half years.

DESVARIEUX: Okay. But this ruling has been to sort of four years in the making, Steve. And kind of give us a sense of a condensed version of what’s been going on concerning BP and their level of accountability to the people down there in the Gulf? Haven’t they already paid out something like $42 billion?

MURCHIE: BP has paid a substantial amount of money already and is lined up to pay substantially more. You know, we have to recognize that this is the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and that BP is primarily responsible. So they’ve already pleaded guilty to criminal conduct. They paid $4 billion in fines for that. There’s a process underway through the Oil Pollution Act for them to pay additional compensation to people and the public who have been damaged by their actions. That’s everything from a bed-and-breakfast or a hotel that lost tourists, to companies that weren’t able to go out and catch fish, to state and local governments who lost tax revenue because they had to close their beaches and their fisheries. And so all of those entities, all of those people deserve to be compensated because of BP’s actions.

What Judge Barbier ruled on yesterday was the civil penalties under the Clean Water Act. And this is above and beyond compensation for the damage. It’s above and beyond criminal penalties. These are the civil penalties that for a corporation are really where the accountability comes in the American justice system. And so Judge Barbier, after sifting through the facts very carefully, came forth with a 153 page decision that proved that, to his satisfaction–and that’s the opinion that counts–that BP was grossly negligent, which allows for the largest possible fine under the Clean Water Act.

DESVARIEUX: Well, let’s go back. Why do you think this disaster was even able to happen? What role do regulations play in all this? Do you feel like there was enough of that to begin with?

MURCHIE: I think a lot of people would like to think of BP as some rogue oil company that was out of control. And that appears to be the case, according to the judge. But we have to remember that the regulators responsible for oversight of the offshore activities and the oil and gas industry in general in the Gulf were very lax, terrible practices happening with the federal agencies being way too cozy with the industry. And for observers like Gulf restoration network, we felt like the BP disaster was likely to happen at one point or another, and we and many other people had been pushing for reforms of the industry. And, unfortunately, it took a disaster to even get a bipartisan commission to come together to come up with recommendations. And while BP is being held accountable for their actions, many of the recommendations of that commission have yet to be implemented.

DESVARIEUX: So we’re talking essentially, just so I’m understand you correctly, Steve, is that there hasn’t been really any significant change in legislation to protect communities and the environment after such a disaster happened?

MURCHIE: There have been some reforms. The Obama administration made some changes to the federal agency that has provided some greater scrutiny, and that’s been helpful. I think the main thing that Congress has actually done, which is potentially going to have great benefit to the Gulf, is passing the Restore Act. And what that does is it dedicates those civil penalties under the Clean Water Act to come back to the Gulf states to be used for restoration. And that process is underway right now, to make sure that those billions of dollars that BP is going to pay will be put to use to bring back the Gulf.

DESVARIEUX: What other regulations would you like to see being implemented?

MURCHIE: That’s a very broad question. You know, there was a bipartisan commission that included people from the industry [Steve later sent us a note to say that “there were not any oil industry representatives directly on the commission, though they were part of the process for the commission’s findings”], senior government officials, a lot of other people, a lot of other stakeholders, to really sift through what the case was, and came up with a whole host of things. One of the things is to have a citizens advisory board that would provide more direct oversight of the industry and transparency in what their activities are. But there are a number of other recommendations.

DESVARIEUX: Alright. So, Steve, I was asking you this off-camera, because the Gulf is sort of the heart of the South, some could argue. And typically there is a close attachment with it being more of a conservative part of the country, and that goes with being a supporter of the energy industry, like companies like BP, Exxon, things of that nature. So since this disaster, have you seen a shift at all in people’s attitudes towards these big industry oil companies? And is there a shift to maybe even consider more green economy down there in the Gulf?

MURCHIE: Well, I think before the energy industry, as in most parts of the country, people made their living off of the natural resources, off the lands. We still have very healthy fisheries in some parts of the Gulf. And that and the natural resources that lead to a pretty vigorous tourism industry are really major underpinnings of the economy down here. And so, investing in restoring the Gulf is a much more sustainable form of economic development than the extractive industries like the oil and gas industry. However, they’re not going away anytime soon. A big portion of the global petrochemical industry is here in Texas, in Louisiana, and there are a lot of resources that can be extracted with much less environmental impact than what we’re currently seeing.

DESVARIEUX: And can you just speak to some specifics? What would you recommend?

MURCHIE: Well, for one thing, coast of Louisiana before the BP disaster was in serious trouble. The Mississippi River Delta ecologically is really important to the health of the entire Gulf of Mexico. It’s an extremely reproductive, extremely productive system. Lots and lots of marine life spend huge parts of their life cycle in the Mississippi River Delta. And it had been seriously degraded through oil and gas activities, as well as channelization of the Gulf of Mexico, channelization of the Mississippi River, and subsidence, as well as sea-level rise from climate change. And so, restoring the Mississippi River Delta is pretty central to restoring the whole health of Gulf. Oil and gas broadly, not just BP, has a huge amount of responsibility for that. It’s estimated that conservatively they’re responsible for about 400 square miles of coastal land loss here in Louisiana. And the state regulators (’cause this is mostly in state waters on state lands) are not adequately enforcing the law to get these companies to fill their canals back in, close down the wells when they’re no longer producing, and clean up those sites.

DESVARIEUX: Alright. Steve. Lastly, what would you say to people who might say that we need oil and gas to run our economy and for jobs, and spills and disasters are going to be inevitable and sort of a necessary evil? What would you say to that?

MURCHIE: I think most people who look at our energy systems don’t think we’re going to be getting entirely away from fossil fuels any time soon. Clearly we needed to accelerate that. The consequences of climate change are too significant, especially for coastal communities, and especially here in Louisiana. We need to deal with that and deal with it faster than we currently are. But the energy sector, conventional fossil fuel production is going to be a part of the economy going forward. But it’s not really a trade-off of one versus the other. We have to figure out a way we can do both of those things sustainably.

DESVARIEUX: Alright. Steve Murchie, joining us from the Big Easy.

Thank you so much for being with us.

MURCHIE: Thank you.

DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Nola.com: Coal, petroleum coke debris found in Plaquemines marsh restoration projects

black spots
Times-Picayune

Black spots in the mix of sediment and water leaving a mile-long pipeline connected to a dredge in the Mississippi River are small chunks of coal. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) (Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
 
 
By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
 
on September 02, 2014 at 5:30 PM, updated September 02, 2014 at 5:34 PM
 
Pieces of coal and petroleum coke – some as large as fists – have been found dotting mile-long stretches of elevated marsh platform created by coastal restoration programs that are pumping sediment inland from the Mississippi River into open water near Lake Hermitage and Bayou Dupont on the west bank of Plaquemines Parish.

The coal and coke debris was spotted at both restoration sites by a reporter and photographer with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, including lumps of coal mixed with sediment flowing from the end of a pipeline at the Lake Hermitage restoration project on Aug. 28.

That same day, representatives of the 
Gulf Restoration Network also found coal and coke debris at the Lake Hermitage site during their own tour of the restoration project. The environmental group filed a complaint about the materials, which it believes is an environmental threat, with the Coast Guard’s National Response Center. The center coordinates pollution responses in federally controlled waters.
 
The sediment for the Lake Hermitage restoration project is mined at borrow sites along the western edge of the Mississippi’s navigation channel downstream from two terminals that load and unload coal and coke from and to barges and ocean-going vessels. Both terminals, however, are downstream from the Bayou Dupont project.

In his complaint, the Gulf Restoration Network’s Scott Eustis said that in roughly half of a 5-acre area at the Lake Hermitage, the ground was “coated in dice-sized pieces of coal and petroleum coke, at about 25% of the visible surface.” The complaint also said that, “About every meter or so, there was a golf ball sized piece or a baseball sized piece. Softball sized chunks were found.”

“This material contains heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, residual oils and (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and can make soils acidic,” Eustis said. “While not an emergency, it is entirely inappropriate, in violation of the Clean Water Act, LDEQ permits, and responsible parties are liable for clean up of all spilled material as this discharge is unpermitted.”

A spokesman for the Coast Guard said the coal and coke debris question would be under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Environmental Quality, which enforces federal Clean Water Act and state rules governing emissions from land-based industries that enter the river.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which chairs a task force that oversees federal-state diversion projects, also said DEQ was the agency responsible for regulating the coal debris.

DEQ did not immediately respond to a request for information about the contaminants found in the restoration sites.
 
The state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which participates in both the Lake Hermitage and Bayou Dupont restoration projects and is the sponsor of the Bayou Dupont long distance pipeline project, discounted the potential for environmental effects from the coal and coke, but said it needs further study.
Some coal lumps found at the Lake Hermitage project were the size of softballs.
Gulf Restoration Network

“CPRA has not observed any negative environmental effects on our projects that have been restored with Mississippi River sediment; however, this is an area that warrants further analysis,” said a statement released by the agency.  “The future of our coast is dependent on the efficient and effective use of our riverine resources, which is evident in the 25,704 acres of wetlands benefited by our work since 2008.  CPRA is committed to understanding the environmental effects of our projects.”

The 
Lake Hermitage project will have 653 acres of new marsh platform when it is completed, with all but 104 acres paid for by the federal-state Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act. The additional acreage is being paid with an advance payment by BP under the federal Oil Pollution Act’s  Natural Resource Damage Assessment program.

The
Bayou Dupont marsh creation project near Ironton also began as a Coastal Wetlands Act project and built 471 acres of new marsh platform. State officials plan to extend the marsh platform westward with a state-funded long distance pipeline that will eventually extend more than 25 miles across Plaquemines, Jefferson and Lafourche parishes.
 
One of the coal and coke transfer terminals located upriver from the site mined for the Lake Hermitage project is United Bulk Terminal-Davant, which recently entered into a consent agreement with DEQ. The agreement was part of the settlement of a January penalty notice  for illegally dumping coal and coke on the east bank Mississippi River batture at United Bulk’s storage yard less than a mile upriver from the dredging borrow area.

Company officials told state inspectors that when the river rose above the debris on the batture, it wasn’t retrieved.

The state inspected the facility in June 2013 and reviewed company records in December 2013 and concluded that the firm had failed to dispose of spilled coal and coke immediately, according to the consent agreement.

“Specifically, at the downstream end of the facility, coke and coal fall from the conveyer belts onto the batture,” says the consent agreement.

“According to the facility representative, the cleanup occurs as long as the river is low,” the consent agreement said. “When the river is high, the piles of coal and coke are submerged in water and cleanup does not occur. At the time of the inspection, the river was high. Each failure to utilize all reasonable methods to minimize any adverse impact, and clean up and dispose of all spilled product and spilled waste immediately is a violation …”
As part of the consent agreement, United Bulk has agreed to donate $16,500 to the Woodlands Conservancy, which operates the Woodlands Trail and Bird Park Sanctuary in Plaquemines. The conservancy will use the money to remove invasive species from its land and replace them with native species.

The company also has agreed to raise 3 ? acres of the batture area beneath its conveyer belts “to enhance the removal of coal/coke that may fall from the conveyer belts to the batture area in order to enhance compliance with existing permits during times of high water,” according to an Army Corps of engineers coastal use permit request filed with the consent agreement.

The firm also has agreed to improvements to its conveyer system aimed at reducing spillage that are part of an $80 million upgrade of the terminal.

“Since United Bulk Terminals Davant acquired the facility in June of 2012, we have demonstrated our commitment to minimizing the impact of our operations on the environment and have invested substantial time and money to ensure compliance with our air and water permits,” the firm said in a statement issued in response to questions about the coal and coke found last week in the restoration projects. 

The statement said the firm has invested nearly $50 million to upgrade its facility “in accordance with the latest technology and practices in terms of safety and environmental impact,” and plans to invest another $30 million. The improvements included spill pans for secondary containment under the conveyers, the statement said. The agreement with DEQ also includes modifications to the batture to prevent spillage regardless of the river stage, the company said.

The DEQ complaint was filed two months after the Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Sierra Club informed United Bulk that they planned to file a complaint in federal court against the company under provisions of the Clean Water Act that allow citizens to attempt to enforce the law.

The groups filed suit against the firm in March, even though the company had already indicated it would agree to a preliminary version of the state consent decree. The suit said that based on DEQ’s past track record, it wanted to assure that the company complied with all provisions of the federal clean water law.
That lawsuit is still pending.

On the east bank of the river, 
International Marine Terminals operates a similar coal loading facility just below Myrtle Grove, with conveyer belts that also extend out over the river.
 

A check of DEQ records indicates that company has reported inadvertent spills of coal into the river, including one spill of as much as 3,000 pounds in 2010. But there’s no record of any enforcement actions by DEQ for such spills. 

 

Bellona.org.: Crushing oyster harvest in Gulf devastating fishermen as science tries to determine if oil or water is to blame

http://bellona.org/news/fossil-fuels/oil/2014-08-crushing-oyster-harvest-gulf-devastating-fishermen-science-tries-determine-oil-water-blame

Fossil fuels, Oil

DELACROIX, Louisiana – Stanley Encalade, 54, an out-of-work oysterman doing odd jobs on boats along highway 300 running through what’s formerly some of the world’s most fertile oyster territory in this state’s St. Bernard Parish, isn’t buying BP’s insistence that fresh water is to blame for the Gulf’s precipitous drop in oyster hauls over the last four years.

Published on by
docked oyster and shrimp boats

DELACROIX, Louisiana – Stanley Encalade, 54, an out-of-work oysterman doing odd jobs on boats along highway 300 running through what’s formerly some of the world’s most fertile oyster territory in this state’s St. Bernard Parish, isn’t buying BP’s insistence that fresh water is to blame for the Gulf’s precipitous drop in oyster hauls over the last four years.

“It’s b*llshit, plain b*llshit,” he says while taking a break from working on a dry docked crab vessel. “That’s what they selling this week, I ain’t buyin like I ain’t been buyin for the last four years – it’s the oil that wrecked my life, the oil. Not water – the oil.”

Encalade’s generations-honed Cajun tongue pronounces “oil” as “earl,” and he takes pride in his heritage among a long line of Cajun fishermen in the Parish.

stanley.jpg

Stanley Encalade, an out of work oyster fisherman in Delacroix, Louisiana. (Photo: Charles Digges/Bellona)

“I know what I seen in my oyster beds over in Black Bay and it wasn’t no fresh water,” he said, referencing a brackish inlet about 10 kilometers southeast of Delacroix. “It was orange mixed with sticky tar and it’s killed everything and nothing’s taken since. It’s the oil.”

Encalade is no young, green reed to these waters. He owns two oyster boats, the Lady Pamela, and Miss Tallis, which are anchored in Plaquemines Parish, about 20 kilometers northeast of the sunbaked highway in Delacroix, and he has fished oyster for 40 years.

But he’s been out of oyster fishing this season and parts of previous, unable to break even on the lean pickings.

“I used to haul up 70 to 80 sacks a day on my own,” he said. But this year, whose season began in October, he’s hauled up a mere 11. “I can’t do it anymore – it’s too depressing.”

A sack, according to oystermen, weighs anywhere from 80 to 130 pounds, though local fisheries say that, at best, sacks are a sort of estimate to indicate 100 pounds, and the estimates can be imprecise.

Encalade, a two-meter-tall father of eight children ranging in age from 19 to 36, now takes odd jobs to pay the bills. He fixes other peoples’ boats, which sit as fallow as his. A high point in his itinerant employment was a turn on Treme, the hit HBO series on post-Katrina New Orleans, as an extra. ”But I ain’t much cut out for acting – I kinda tell it too straight,” he said, smiling and scratching a pustule on his face he said he had since he helped work oil rescue – like every other area fisherman – after the blowout.

stanly boat fix

A docked oyster boat Encalade is fixing for another owner in hopes of better seasons to come. (Photo: Charles Digges/Bellona)

“BP sure threw us a curve ball, killed everything in the ocean, and now even the people’s dying. We get’s to watch.”

BP speaks in its own defense

The oil giant responsible for the Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20, 2010 – which amounted to 4.9 million barrel, 87 day oil geyser and the 1.85 million gallon’s worth toxic Corexit oil dispersant rained upon it – has recently cited Louisiana State scientific data and declared its innocence in the destruction of the Gulf’s second biggest cash crop, whose harvests can be wiped out by fresh water as easily as they can by crude and the oil dispersant Corexit. Oysters need salt water to survive.

An April 12 statement from BP, issued in response to an Associated Press article, and pointed its finger squarely at “Louisiana’s diversion in 2010 of fresh water from the Mississippi River into oyster habitat,” as well as flooding in in 2011. The diversion was ordered as a last ditch effort to clear oil and dispersant out of Louisiana’s ever-dwindling wetlands and marshes – though scientists say it was ill advised.

The evidence, furnished to BP by the state, the statement asserted, “debunked” the idea “that oyster populations in Louisiana were adversely affected by oil or dispersants from the Deepwater Horizon accident […]”

Meanwhile, the lion’s share of seafood safety testing is done at sea by nonprofits like the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) in affiliation with the University of Texas and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences Center.

How bad is the downturn?

It’s clear from Bellona’s interviews with scientists, fishermen, seafood distributors, and Gulf state Marine resource officials that BP’s stoic rebuttal that the abysmal oyster harvest is not related to its disaster must be taken with the grains of salt the company is insisting were washed out of the oyster beds.

By this year, the oyster harvest Gulf-wide is hovering around one quarter to one third of what it was prior to the BP spill, Chris Nelson, owner of Bon Secour Fisheries, Inc – which buys oysters from all five Gulf states – told Bellona in a telephone interview.

“There’s just nothing out there,” he said. “We’ve had barren spells before, especially in the 80s and 90s but they’re always cyclical – this is like there’s something chronic out there in the water that’s just preventing things in areas that were once abundant from taking.”

oystershells

Oyster shells with which the state government and private fishermen are hoping to create new oyster beds, or ‘spats’ to improve future harvests. (Photo: Charles Digges/Bellona)

He said that fresh water inundations tend only to impact oyster harvests for a season, sometimes less, and that fresh water alone couldn’t account for the ongoing downward spiral “which is probably the longest we’ve ever seen.”

What the dreadful harvests mean in numbers are that Louisiana’s public reefs produced about 3 million to 7 million pounds of oyster meat a year prior to BP’s catastrophe, according to figures reported by AP.

Nelson said production in 2010 dropped by some 2 percent, but by the 2011 and 2012 seasons, “it was clear things were really going off a cliff.”

Oyster production in 2012 saw a free-fall to 563,100 pounds (255,417 kilograms). Then in 2013, the figures climbed to 954,950, Nelson said that was a decent bounce, but still was only a third of pre-2010 production rates.

Where the plunging harvest is more visible is in the dollars and cents, said Nelson. Prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, prices were holding steady at about $25 a sack. After the fabled nightmare storm hit, followed shortly by the smaller Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, sack prices rose to about $30.

After the spill, however, the short supply and variability in sack size and quality, Nelson said he is having to persuade his customers to pay from $45 t0 $60 per sack.

“That is a rough sell and a huge increase, but we just don’t have the harvest volume to go any lower,” he said.

emptynet

The rope metallic droop of an empty oyster net on a dry docker fishing boat in Hopedale, Louisiana. (Photo: Charles Digges/Bellona)

Gulf academics tread carefully

In the local academic community, the oil vs. water debate is one in which scientists can be heard taking out scales to very carefully weigh their words.

In brief, results that would contradict the findings of BP – which still holds the status of a monarchy in the local imagination, comprised of both of happy courtesans and vassals as well as rebellious rabble at the gate – stands to lose a shirt full more of money in the currently stalled $7.8 billion damage suit, whose case papers are yellowing in a New Orleans Federal Courtroom.

Most people on the Gulf Coast with an degrees behind their name are not anxious to find themselves on the wrong end of a potential legal meat-grinder.

Most fertile oyster beds nearly destroyed

The Louisiana corner of the Gulf of Mexico has in the past accounted for about half of the Gulf’s oyster harvest and a third of overall US production because of the usually rich larvae-bearing currents, Dr. Thomas Soniat, an oyster biologist with the University of New Orleans, told Bellona.

Oyster larvae, whose lifecycle is about two weeks, are swept by currents that round the southern tip of the Gulf’s Chandeleur Islands and nestle along Louisiana’s east coast substrates, or oyster beds, within its rich wetlands.

Within the first days of the spill, the Chandeleur Islands, some 15 kilometers north of BP’s runaway Macondo well, were some of the most oil and dispersant soaked areas in the Gulf.

Whether any oyster larvae could have been contaminated in this stew of oil and dispersant as they rode the currents through Chandeleur Sound before settling in beds in eastern Louisiana is something Dr Soniat told Bellona still remains unknown.

oil and marsh

LSU’s Dr. Eugene Turner says the BP oil spill reduced the total area of Louisiana’s wetlands by three times between 2010 and 2013. (Photo: Matthew Preusch/Gulf Restoration Network)

Dr Eugene Turner, a wetlands specialist at Louisiana State University’s School of the Coast and Environment, said substrates usually consist of oyster shell beds.

But encroachment upon Louisiana’s wetlands – which reduced in area by three times over the first three years after the spill, according to his research – have necessitated building limestone, brick and even cement substrates for the larvae to take root, or “set” as fishermen call it. Some set, some don’t, and the why is a source of fierce debate.

Birds pointed to hydrocarbons in oyster territory

While Dr Tuner has often been cast in local media reports as a proponent of the BP fresh-water-only theory, his research has been far more nuanced, taking into account all variables, and he told Bellona outright that: “No one here is saying there was zero impact from the oil.”

Because the wetlands and barrier islands like the Chandeleurs were critical stopovers for migratory birds, Dr Turner told Bellona that studies LSU conducted on migratory loons, who feed near oyster beds, “showed signatures” of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – or PAHs, signs of oil – in oyster habitats. Dr Turner concluded that these PAH signatures were most likely due to the loons’ food sources.

This, said DR. Turner, plus an uncharacteristic lack of insect life in wetlands and oyster habitats noticed two years after the spill, led to deeper investigations of what lay beneath the wetlands and the oyster beds.

“The evaporation of some very volatile stuff, PAHs that had slipped in under the oil booms, was noticed,” he said. “The oyster harvests occur quite deep, and it’s very volatile down there.”

The research also revealed in the areas studies that PAH levels were several times what Dr Turner said were normal background levels, and that “it will take decades or more to get back to those levels.”

The normal background PAH levels are set by the usual organic interaction occurring from crude releases making it to short that are routinely released by any of the 40,000 oil platforms, operating or not, in the Gulf.

booms

Oil booms didn’t prevent oil and Corexit from oozing into wetlands and oyster habitat, say fishermen. (Photo: Matthew Preusch/Gulf Restoration Network)

Yet, Dr Turner also said LSU studies showed that organisms similar to oysters were grown in high PAH level habitats where able to thrive as if the PAHs weren’t there at all, presenting something of a conundrum, but one that he said needs further study.

The fresh water theory also holds some water

There also is evidence to suggest that the fresh water inundations are not off-base. The 2010 Mississippi River diversion referred to in the BP statement was, said Dr Turner “a move that those who knew better would not have undertaken,” because of the ravages the fresh water visited on Louisiana’s oyster harvesting areas.

Later, in 2012, the Bonnet Carre Spillway was built in New Orleans to alleviate the 2011 flooding referenced by the April 12 BP statement.

Melissa Scallan of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources told Bellona the spillway decimated her state’s oyster haul for 2012, reducing to a mere 65 sacks against the previous year’s 43,772. When measured against Mississippi’s take of 385,949 sacks in the 2009 season, though, Mississippi’s 2011 take was a pittance.

Scallan was thus on the fence when considering point blank whether the BP spill or the inundations did more damage to Mississippi’s harvest.

“Obviously the oil played a big role, but the water is important to,” she said a little hesitantly. “I guess we will not know for a long time.”

Blocked state environmental information?

In conversation with Bellona, Nelson was surprised by the LSU research cited by Dr Turner. Very little of it has been made public.

Nelson also noted that the oyster blight is not general throughout the Gulf. Some areas that have produced in the past are still producing, where other areas that could have been counted on for consistently abundant harvests are “dead zones.”

These dead zones, he said, correspond to areas that were hit by BP oil and dispersant, and said that an ongoing PAH presence in oyster habitats, especially in the Gulf’s previously most productive area, could account for the rock bottom harvest rates for the last four years.

But Nelson said that “those who would know aren’t telling me whether it’s fresh water inundation, or BP oil and dispersant or even something else.”

The ones who presumably know, said Nelson, are officials at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which has been conducting a so-called Nation Resource Disaster Assessment (NRDA) on the public reef oyster fishing areas since days after the Deepwater Horizon blew, and thus has wide discretion over what it reveals and keeps close to the vest.

undercover

Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries officials are unable to comment on the condition of many oyster habitats that fall under a National Resources Disaster Assessment (NRDA) ,restricting public knowledge about the environment. (Photo: Jonathan Henderson/Gulf Restoration Network)Nelson, fishermen and local activist groups complain that the long running study should have revealed at least some tangible results by now, and say the agency is purposely stymieing the flow of information on the local environment.

Nelson routinely tries to get small clues out of them and says “it’s like there’s some sort of gag order in place over there.”

“We don’t know if they’ve found something horrible that will kill oysters in the Gulf forever or if it’s a problem that will resolve relatively soon,” he said. “But the point is we don’t know and they won’t say.”

After repeated calls and emails from Bellona over a three-day period, Wildlife and Fisheries responded with an emailed  statement reading that, “Impacts to Louisiana’s natural resources as a result of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill continue to be investigated as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process set forth under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. We do not yet know the full extent of the damages to the resources (including the impacts to oysters.)”

The statement added that the agency has “documented significant reductions in reproductive success of oysters on our public seed grounds,” and acknowledged that, “[w]hile investigations into the direct cause of low spat [oyster bed] production continues through the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process, the low oyster spat [production] coincides with the timing and location of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”The agency implied that it wasn’t under any instructions not to release information, writing that the NRDA trustees “continue to actively investigate impacts to oysters as a result of the spill and they have and will continue to release study plans developed over the course of the spill.” The statement provided a link to the various study plans Wildlife and Fisheries has under consideration for each of the impacts it is studying under the NRDA. Nelson nevertheless ironically noted that prior to what seems to be one of   Wildlife and Fisheries first pubic statements, the agency’s personnel had been deflecting reporters’ inquiries to him, “as if I know something they don’t.”

Fishermen see oil not water

Fifty-eight-year-old oyster and shrimp fisherman George Barisch, who is also president of the United Commercial Fishermans’ Association, gave some credence to the fresh water notion – though not much. He’s been oyster fishing since he was nine-years-old, on a three generation leased 35-acre plot, and he’s no stranger to fresh water inundations.

“Mother nature’s a bitch – she’ll give, take away, and give again,” he said. “There’s always the fresh water cycle, but the beds always come back.”

But, for his beds, this hasn’t happened since 2010.

He told Bellona that his legacy oyster bed in the Louisiana Marsh’s Caraco Bay was destroyed by oil and Corexit, despite promises by BP not to dump it’s toxic dispersant in Chandeleur Sound between the Chandeleur Islands and Louisiana’s east coast.

“Another lie,” he said of the Corexit dumps.

“In my case, BP took away and mother nature can’t pay their debt – what killed my oysters was oil and Corexit, not fresh water.”

barisch testing

George Barisch testing the safety of oysters near Shell Beach in Yscloskey, Louisiana. (Film still courtesy of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network)

Since then, he’s down a whopping 93 percent in his oyster take since before the spill. Where routinely he would book some 4,000 to 6,000 sacks per season with Nelson’s Bon Secour prior to 2010, he said he hasn’t raised even 600 marketable sacks in the four years since the spill. The rest of his beds are contaminated by oil and dispersant.

“What ever else is left in my beds is covered with such unspeakable nastiness that I can’t possibly bring sell it on the market,” he said. “God forbid somebody gets sick and dies and it gets traced to my product.”

Sacks are typically labeled in detail, with dates of the catch, or “land,” the vessel and the captain.

But this is far from his worries: “My main issue is that none of my leased plots have any babies coming up – I;m broke.”

The nightmare will not go away

Encalade is involved in ongoing litigation with BP, but like most, is not hopeful for any settlement. He passed on earlier offers of $30,000, $40,000 and then $50,000.

“Those are nothing but an insult,” he said. “For a life’s work that I can’t do no more? For work I’ve been doing since before I could read? It’s a g*ddamned insult.”

He and his 27-year-old son are currently represented in the $7.8 billion class action damage suit in New Orleans he said, but that’s not paying any bills.

“Sometimes at night, I fall asleep feeling like I’m in the cabin of my boat,” he confides. “The radio will squawk and I’ll talk back, tell ‘em I’m doing good with 60 or 70 sacks for my trip.”

It’s one of those dreams that goes one, he says, staring off into the heat shimmer rising from the asphalt and gravel and making the far off willows look like they’re submerged in water.

“It’s a dream I’m sure I’ll wake up from and find out the whole nightmare of everything that’s happened since the BP spill is just all that – a nightmare.” his

He lifts his cap from his head and wipes away sweat while staring at his work boots, contemplating that fantasy. “Then I wake up, and find out it’s no nightmare,” he says.

“It’s right here.”

This is the fourth in a series of article Bellona is producing on the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Charles Digges

charles@bellona.no